Hiking the Subway in Zion National Park, UT

This is a popular canyon hike in the Left Fork of North Creek in Zion National Park, UT. Currently, 80 permits are issued per day, mostly through a lottery three months in advance. Walk up permits are sometimes available. It can be done top down or bottom up to an oval shaped section carved out of the canyon resembling a subway tunnel.

We drove at dawn to the Left Fork Trailhead and began the steep 450' descent into the canyon. A sign was placed at the bottom to show people the way out. I expected the trail to fade out quickly, but it continued close to a mile before we had to start picking our way around boulders and debris.

dropping into the canyon

About half way to the Subway, there are two gray slabs on the left side with petrified dinosaur prints. A nice bonus. I had a waypoint marked for the dino prints, but there was also a small cairn with a stick set up next to it to point it out.

Past the dino prints, the canyon started to get narrower. Another mile upstream, we ran into the first cascade. These are gentle shelves of red rock with sheets of water washing over them. The whole canyon was picturesque. We walked up the cascades and learned to avoid the black algae growing on the rock. It was less slippery to stay on red rock, even if there was more water flowing over it. After a longer set of cascades, we came to a 10' waterfall. It was easiest to go up on the right side of the waterfall. A few more twists in the canyon and we arrived at The Subway. The curved walls start wide, then close in, maybe 20' apart. Pools were carved out of the floor creating some interesting effects. The early morning lighting wasn't ideal, and I have low end photo gear, so my photos don't look much like those taken by professionals. We hung around for a while and had the whole place to ourselves. I expected to see some people there from the top down route. We continued further until we ran into a pool that was too deep to get over without swimming. I wanted to continue up to the next waterfall, but didn't have extra dry clothes with me. An oversight. We turned around and started back, looking for a place to rest and refuel. We soon ran into three other parties doing the bottom up route. We had no trouble finding the exit point, but it was a hot climb out. My GPS clocked just over 10 miles for the round trip. Most sources list the round trip as 8-9 miles, but we did quite a few boulder bypasses on the sides of the canyon and some general wandering around. I did have to delete some random error points in the track so it's possible the GPS distance was off. In any case, it was a great hike to one of Zions many attractions.

one of many cascades

scrumtrulescent!

have to swim to go any further